Labels

Friday, February 27, 2015

Europe Lays Out Vision for Climate Change -The European Union will reform its cap-and-trade system to restrain CO2 pollution

While American lawmakers have succumbed,
yet again, to a preoccupation with the debate over whether a pipeline
should be built through the U.S. to help Canadian tar sands miners reach
intercontinental oil markets, European officials have been spending the
week knuckling down on climate action.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s environment committee agreed on a plan to shore up the continent’s flagshipcap-and-trade program,
which has been ailing for years. Coincidentally, one day later, the
European Commission outlined its vision for how Europe and the rest of
the world should work together under a new U.N. pact to spare the planet
the worst effects of climate change....
The European Union’s executive body sent a memo to
EU lawmakers and heads of state Wednesday, outlining what it called a
“blueprint for tackling global climate change beyond 2020.” It was
drafted to help the EU prepare for U.N. climate negotiations ahead of a
key round of talks in Paris in December, when a post-2020 global
agreement is due to be finalized....The memo says the “Paris Protocol must” secure commitments from world
governments to “ambitious reductions” of annual greenhouse gas
emissions by 60 percent below 2010 levels in 2050, by “setting out
clear, specific, ambitious and fair legally binding mitigation
commitments” that ensure global warming is kept to less than 2°C
(3.6°F).... European heads of state have already committed to reducing the amount of
greenhouse gas pollution that their states collectively produce each
year by 40 percent between 1990 and 2030. The newly-stated 60 percent goal, from 2010 to 2050, hasn’t received their formal blessing.
It’s unclear whether climate negotiators from other countries would
commit to the 60 percent reduction goal in Paris, though it’s among
options for a new long-term climate goal that are being considered. So far, the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest climate polluters, have only stated what they’re willing to commit to do under the next agreement until 2025 or 2030.... Europe’s carbon pollution-pricing program, which is the biggest in the
world, was formed to help curb greenhouse gas levels in the
atmosphere—but it was created before its economy unexpectedly tanked.
When the economy crashed in 2008, demand for energy fell with it, and
that has meant that European industry has needed fewer carbon pollution
allowances to operate under a business-as-usual scenario than had been
anticipated. The glut of allowances that has resulted is keeping allowance prices and revenue low, and it is limiting the effects of the emissions trading system on global pollution levels.... Some of the carbon allowances that were planned to be auctioned off in
the coming years will be withheld from the market, perhaps temporarily,
beginning in 2018. Parliamentarians in the environment committee haggled
Tuesday over the details of how many allowances would be withheld, and
when, before settling on a compromise.... Thomson Reuters Point Carbon analysis suggests that the reforms will
lead to an annual cap-and-trade revenue of about $15 billion in
2020—representing a steady growth of revenue that EU member states have so far been reinvesting heavily in clean energy and climate initiatives. Without the reforms, the analysis projected revenue in 2020 of about $9 billion.
Perhaps more importantly, the emissions trading system is now
forecast to prevent 61 million tons of carbon dioxide from being pumped
into the atmosphere in 2020. That’s up from a projected 12 million tons
in the absence of reforms.

Aguanomics

Robert Stavins Blog

Gadget

BlogUpp!

Subscribe Via Blogger

Networked Blogs

Gadget

This content is not yet available over encrypted connections.

ABOUT US

Environmental Valuation & Cost Benefit News covers legal, academic, and regulatory developments pertaining to the valuation of environmental amenities and disamenities, such as clean air, trees, parks, congestion, and noise. We apprise the reader about ways in which costs and benefits are measured, and the results of empirical studies. We hope that this information will allow public and private organizations to comprehend the risks and benefits of various actions, help disputants to resolve conflicts equitably and efficiently, and improve the quality of public policies.

We will only discuss issues related to the empirical quantification of private and social costs and benefits and damages, and summarize information from daily newspapers, academic journals, legal publications, court decisions, professional newsletters commissioned studies, and on-line services. This newsletter is dedicated to the principle that all policies place values upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that more information, explicit specification of assumptions, and rigorous analysis can help our society to better meet these ends. This site will increasingly serve, in conjunction with others, as a valuation database. We will include a wide range of studies, including non-environmental reports, because omission of a factor effectively values it at zero, and biases decisions..